Pete Dawkins has experienced every emotion as a player in the Army-Navy football rivalry, and he is among a long gray line that would love to again feel the thrill of victory.

Army hasn't beaten Navy in eight years, not since a 26-17 victory at old Veteran's Stadium in Philadelphia. Saturday's (2:40 p.m.) meeting will also be played in Philadelphia, at Lincoln Financial Field, in the 111th meeting of the series.

As a sophomore at West Point in 1956, Dawkins' Black Knights finished in a 7-7 tie against Navy. In 1957 they lost 14-0. But in 1958 Army capped an unbeaten season by drilling the Midshipmen 22-6.

That was quite a year for Dawkins, as the running back won the Heisman Trophy in leading Army to the No. 3 ranking in the country.

All three games were played in Philadelphia back then, at the old Municipal Stadium. With Army entering this game with a winning record for the first time since 1996, the corps has to feel more confident going into this one.

As Dawkins knows, won-loss records in this game are as irrelevant as its gets. When brothers fight, anything goes.

"There's something about the warrior ethic that ought to be and is an element of the academies that manifests itself in football. There was of course no Air Force when this began," Dawkins point out. "The whole notion of a warrior building this rivalry into something intense is often spoken of ... and I’m thinking back to my time ... Army and Navy having two seasons.

"One is all of the games in a season before Army-Navy, and the Army-Navy game; which just expresses how deeply felt and intense it is, and I think positively so."

This year will be even more so, given Army's success, while Navy awaits yet another bowl experience. This is the best these teams have both been for quite a while.

"With (Rich) Ellerson's influence and a couple of other things that are going on, the Army program is rapidly gaining strength. Whether we'll prove we're far enough along to beat Navy this year we’ll have to see," Dawkins said. "But it is true that this is a game where emotion plays an unusually large role, and the team that is really, truly 'up,' and all teams are up for an Army-Navy game, the team that is able to marshal that extra dimension of intensity, I think, and it's been proven, can overcome the advantage of an opponent that’s maybe the stronger team."

Dawkins was in on discussions when Army was looking for a coach two years ago, and he was an Ellerson fan from the start.

- Army Great, Pete Dawkins

"I thought Rich was the perfect guy," he said. "Not just good or not just great, but perfect. He is talented and accomplished as an X and O coach, and was experienced in multiples of the option offense ... which I was convinced, was the right offense for Army to use. But even beyond that, the institutional fit was as ideal as I could imagine or I've ever seen.

"I think he's done a brilliant job so far. The stream of new recruits coming in, the people attracted to the Point, or the Prep, are first-rate. This season is still a work in progress, obviously, but we could have been 8-3," he said. "There's been disappointment along the way, but the team is clearly getting stronger and getting more confident, and I feel he's re-instilling in them a habit of winning, which is extraordinarily important, and which we had suffered from an absence for quite awhile."

Despite the team's growth the past two seasons, a loss Saturday and a loss to SMU later this month in the Bell Helicopter Bowl would leave Army with its 14th straight losing season.

And despite that Army went so long between bowl games, Dawkins remains optimistic.

"I'm disappointed, to say the least," he said about the drought."

"But I think there's an explanation to it. I'm very encouraged by the fact that a realistic view of where this team is now, that change is going to be lasting."

Due to a busy schedule these days he was only able to see one game live this season, Notre Dame. He has watched most of the others on TV, "heart beat by heart beat," he said with a laugh. In the middle of starting a hedge fund, he's been on the road a lot.

What has helped keep him current is that during the past five years he has been a voter in the Harris Poll, which means every Sunday he has to provide his Top 25 rankings.

"It's been delightful," he said, "and it's added inducement to keep track of the college football season ... which I enjoy a lot I might say, and I've gained through that kind of an added perspective on West Point football."

That perspective is certainly different than when he played.

Dawkins said he weighed 220 pounds as a player. He had, "good speed, not blinding speed, and I had reasonable success returning punts and kicks with long runbacks.

"One of the things I found out later was that I had unusually good peripheral vision. There was a study that proved that leading running backs had wider peripheral vision than the average person. And on films I would see that all of a sudden I would dart very much sharply from one side to the other as someone from the other team would come into the frame of the screen.

"So I think that helped me decidedly. And it may have been that I had more than my dose of good fortune," he modestly said.

As for the Navy game, when Army tied them in 1956, Navy was 6-1-2 and ranked 16th in the Associated Press Poll. Army finished 5-3-1.

In the 1957 game, won by Navy, the Mids finished 9-1-1 and climbed to No. 5 in the country, while Army went 7-2 and was ranked 18th (above Wisconsin and VMI).

When Army beat Navy in '58, the Black Knights completed an 8-0-1 season (14-14 tie at Pitt), and were ranked behind only No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Iowa.

The top 10 that year played out with some familiar names: Auburn, Oklahoma, Air Force, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Syracuse and TCU. Of equal interest was that the top 25 that season also included No. 17 Notre Dame, No. 18 SMU and No. 20 Rutgers.

Although there are some familiar programs from back then that are still prevalent, Dawkins called the changes in the game during the past half decade, "Profound. At every level.

"I haven't thought about it enough to give a carefully, modulated answer, but first of all, conditioning has improved since I'd been playing. Kids are bigger, more robust, they've developed strength and agility training and with certain things kids start when they're 7-8 years-old. And they are coached now with some degree of excellence in many regions of the country," he said.

"And so their experience, their game experience, their knowledge, I think, is incredibly more developed than it was in my era."

Having been involved in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, which brings together 90 of the nation's top high school players for a game every January at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Dawkins has been able to get a close up look at today's young players.

"Their level of physical maturity, and the game-savvy maturity that they display is stunning and incomparable to the level that was characteristic of when I played," he said. "Kids are stronger, faster, and the standard continues to rise."

Does that mean that Pete Dawkins, All-America, Heisman Trophy winner, would have a more difficult time if he played college ball in 2010? "Initially, if you had a time capsule of me from my opening game (in 1958) against South Carolina, to the opening game this year (Eastern Michigan), I wouldn’t even have made the squad. I'd like to believe," he pointed out, "that if the time capsule had been 50 years later of me being born and I lived through these kids’ experiences, who knows? I might have been competitive."

He was serious.

It should be noted that the MVP trophy at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl is named in his honor.

That is one of many honors and accomplishments attained by Dawkins, who lives in New Jersey with his wife Judy.

He remains the only Cadet who has ever served at West Point as Brigade Commander, Class President, football Captain and a "star man" ... that being among the top 5 percent academically of his graduating class.

A Rhodes Scholar, he went on to Infantry School and Ranger school before joining the 82nd Airborne Division. He received two Bronze Stars for valor during service in Vietnam, while holding commands in the 7th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne.

He would also receive a MPA and Ph. D from Princeton University.

Suffice to say, by the time he retired with the rank of Brigadier General in 1983, he had quite a background in leadership and success as he undertook corporate positions on Wall Street, as well as being chairman and CEO of Primerica Financial Services, Inc.

None of that, of course, could have been possible without help, and Dawkins is no exception.

What makes his story so compelling is that he had polio as a child. And if not for his mother's determination, Pete Dawkins may never have left his family's home in Michigan.

"I was the beneficiary of a very strong and positive family environment, and probably most interestingly was that my strongest influence was my mother, who, like so many middle class mothers who had lived through the depression, really wanted her children to succeed.

"But I sensed there was a special feature of that. She was the one, when I got polio, who found a doctor who was doing some experimental work, not putting you in a cast but doing physiotherapy."

By age 11 he was on his way to health, and would eventually be enrolled in a secondary high school by his mother, when at the time, Dawkins said, "I was teetering on the edge of not going in a positive direction.

"There was a great dignity about her, but she had a steel core," he said. "One thing she bred into and taught all of her children was that it was OK to fail. It was acceptable to fail, but unacceptable to quit. And so that was sort of the seed, I would guess, and the core of what made West Point a perfect fit for me."

He could have gone to Yale and obviously been accomplished. But he went to the United States Military Academy, where he would be shaped and fine-tuned, both as a scholar and an athlete. He also played hockey at the Point, and in England became quite proficient at rugby.

But it was at the Corps where Dawkins began to march to his drummer.

"I was young, just 17, but I loved every part of the academy. I was just attracted to the challenge, and every aspect of the military academy and every day confronted with that. That had an annealing effect on what qualities I valued, that I had been brought up on."

It's all part of that warrior ethic.